Instantly sends 10K cold emails a day. Tycoon runs the company behind them.
Instantly is the go-to cold email infrastructure for agencies and outbound-heavy startups — unlimited sending accounts, built-in inbox warmup, AI email personalization, a built-in lead database, and deliverability tooling that makes sending 5,000-20,000 cold emails a day mostly reliable. If you're running a cold email shop, Instantly's $37-$358/month tiers are a steal. Tycoon is not a cold email tool — it's a pre-hired AI team (Astra as AI CEO plus CMO, CTO, COO, CFO) that runs a company. Instantly is the machine. Tycoon is the ops team.
Instantly is sharp infrastructure for a specific problem: how to send a lot of cold emails without your domain getting blacklisted. Tycoon is a team that does company work — including sales, but not at 10K-emails-a-day volume. If cold email IS your business, buy Instantly. If cold email is one of ten things that have to happen, hire Tycoon and let the AI Head of Sales do lower-volume, higher-quality outbound.
Clear answers about wallet credit, usage, subscriptions, and how Tycoon charges for work.
For low-to-medium volume outbound (under 500 emails per week), the AI Head of Sales can do it via the Gmail or SMTP connector — build the list, write personalized emails, schedule send, handle replies. For 10,000 emails a day across 50 inboxes with automatic warmup and deliverability engineering, no — that's Instantly's engineered specialty and we don't replicate it. If your pain is 'I need to 10x outbound volume safely', Instantly is the tool.
Google and Microsoft's spam filters look at engagement patterns. If a brand-new domain or inbox suddenly sends 500 cold emails in a day, it gets flagged and deliverability collapses. Warmup simulates real engagement — automated reply networks that make your inbox look like a real person corresponding, gradually ramping send volume over weeks. Instantly has a mature warmup network built in. Tycoon doesn't — the AI Head of Sales just sends via your connected email provider, which is fine at low volume but dangerous if you try to scale cold.
Instantly's tiers are $37/mo Growth, $97/mo Hypergrowth, $358/mo Light Speed, and custom for higher. No per-seat pricing. Tycoon is $50-$500/mo usage-based for the whole AI team. If all you need is cold email, Instantly is dramatically cheaper than most full AI team tools. But Tycoon is 10 tools in one, so the comparison is apples-to-oranges.
Yes, and it's a popular stack. Instantly handles the actual cold email sending at volume. Tycoon's AI Head of Sales plans the ICP, writes the templates, feeds them into Instantly, and handles positive replies with nuanced follow-up — moving warm leads out of Instantly and into 1:1 conversations. Meanwhile Tycoon's CMO is running content, CTO is shipping product, CFO is tracking cash. Clean separation of concerns.
Different sweet spots. Apollo is a lead database + lighter engagement tool — great for 100-500 sends a week with CRM workflow. Instantly is pure cold email infrastructure — great for 5K-20K sends a day focused on volume and deliverability. Agencies usually pick Instantly. SMB founders doing targeted outbound with CRM integration often pick Apollo. Tycoon sits above both and can drive either as a tool.